Social Media Glossary: 48 Terms You Should Know

Okay, friends. Here are 48 social media terms making their way across the web as we speak. Our list started out as 45, but several members of the 60 Second Marketer community have already suggested additions, so we’re up to 48.

Please feel free to add your own suggestion in the comments section below. Be sure to include a definition. If you include the definition, I’ll update the post with a link back to your website.

Enjoy!

App – An application that performs a specific task on your smart phone or your computer. The term “app” was popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple.

Alerts – Daily email notifications (usually sent by Google Alerts) that let you know when a keyword or keyword phrase that you’ve selected is mentioned on the web. Perfect for people trying to stay abreast of certain topics or online brand mentions.

BKV Digital and Direct Response – A marketing communications firm that sponsors the 60 Second Marketer. BKV’s clients include AT&T, John Deere, The Home Depot, Daimler, Equifax and the American Red Cross.

Blog – A tool used by content-providers around the globe to connect with readers. The most popular blogging platforms include WordPress, Typepad and Google’s Blogger.

Compete – A web-based application that allows people to compare and contrast statistics for different websites over time. Totally worth checking out.

Delicious – A free online bookmarking service owned by Yahoo! When someone tags an article, video or blog post with a Delicious bookmark, it’s the equivalent of getting a “vote.”

Digg – This platform is similar to Delicious in that people vote for articles, videos and blog posts. If your content gets enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for millions of visitors to see.

Disqus – A comment system and moderation tool for your website or blog. This service lets you add social web integration to any site on any platform.

Drupal – Interested in starting a blog? Then Drupal may be for you. More intuitive than WordPress and more robust than Blogger.

Facebook – A social network that connects people with friends, family and business associates. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 500 million users.

Flickr – A social network that allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets and other methods.

Foursquare — Foursquare is a mobile check-in service that allows regular customers to get points every time they visit their favorite restaurant, bar, coffee shop or whatever. The more points you get, the more likely you’ll be the recipient of special offers from that establishment.

Google Documents – Web-based office applications that include tools for word processing, presentations and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.

Gowalla– A social network where friends share their locations and connect with others in proximity to each other.

Reddit – Reddit is similar to Digg and Delicious. It is a social news site that is built upon a community of users who share and comment on stories.

Search Engine Optimization – The process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via unpaid or organic search traffic.

SlideShare – An online social network for sharing presentations and documents. Users can favorite and embed presentations as well as share them on other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Skype – Skype is a free program that allows for text, audio and video chats between users.

Social Media – Media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly-accessible and scalable publishing techniques.

Social Media Monitoring – The process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media.

StumbleUpon – A platform that’s similar to Digg, Delicious and Reddit. When you rate a website that you like using StumbleUpon, you automatically share it with like-minded people around the globe.

Tag Cloud – A tag cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, typically used to describe the content of web sites.

Technorati – A popular blog search engine that also provides categories and authority rankings for blogs.

TweetDeck – An application that connects users with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.

Tweetup – A Tweetup is an organized or impromptu gathering of people who use Twitter.

Twitter – Twitter is a platform that allows users to share 140-character-long messages publicly. User can “follow” each other as a way of subscribing to each others’ messages. Additionally, users can use the @username command to direct a message towards another Twitter user.

Twitter Search – Twitter Search is a search engine operated by Twitter to search for Twitter messages and users in real-time.

TypePad – TypePad is a free and paid blogging platform similar to Blogger. It allows users to host and publish their own blogs.

Video Blog – A blog that produces regular video content often around the same theme on a daily or weekly basis.

Viddler – Viddler is a popular video sharing site similar to YouTube and Vimeo in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others.

Vimeo – Vimeo is a popular video sharing service in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others. Vimeo user videos are often more artistic and the service does not allow commercial video content.

Viral Marketing – Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes.

Webinar – A webinar is used to conduct live meetings, training, or presentations via the Internet.

Widget – A widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or text box.

Wiki – A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser, allowing for collaboration between users.

WordPress – WordPress is a content management system and contains blog publishing tools that allow users to host and publish blogs.

Yelp – A website that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses. Over 31 million people access Yelp’s website each month, putting it in the top 150 U.S. Internet websites.

YouTube – If you have to look up what YouTube is, you shouldn’t be reading this social media glossary. We don’t mean to be rude, but that’s just a fact.

D’oh! nnGreat point, Laura. Thanks for catching that. I’ve now added Foursquare to this post. Can’t believe I missed that.nnBy the way, if you want to read an in-depth post about Foursquare on the 60 Second Marketer blog, you can do so here. It’s a post called “What is Foursquare? And how can I use it to grow my business?”nnhttp://tinyurl.com/355q58tnnThanks for your help!nnBest,nJamie

Hi Jamie,rnrnGreat list, everyone will find some that they have missed. A couple of possible additions: Posterous.com and Slideshare.net. WordPress alternatives – eg Drupal or Joomla – although more content managment focused rather than blog focused.

Sorry, but i think Opera isn’t open source. See http://www.opera.com/press/faq/ ‘Is Opera planning to go open source?’ How about stating ‘Opera is a multi-functional web browser with built-in email and chat client, download manager …’

Hi Jamie
Great list, thanks so much!
What do you think about adding Twuffer? It allows twitter users to compose list of future tweets and schedules their release.
Cheers!
Lynne
Multiburstmarketing.com

stephgrov

Hi, Jamie –

Great resource list for people in social media marketing. Thanks for sharing!

What about adding Pinterest? Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that lets you organize and share things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan weddings, decorate homes, share fashion tips, organize recipes, etc.

All the best,

Stephanie
PGC-ATL.com

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